Clarizen Blog

Top 5 tools for the modern-day IT team

If you were to ask 100 IT professionals that question, you’d probably get 100 different answers. But you’d also find a common thread, because there’s one characteristic that’s common to all IT teams: they’re in charge of the technology and tools that allow the business to function.

In order to develop, implement, configure and support all the tools needed by a growing company, an IT team needs a separate set of tools for itself. The larger the company, the more important these tools become. Let’s take a quick look at the most important items in an enterprise IT team’s toolbox.

1. Security Tools

It may not be the flashiest or most exciting aspect of IT, but without strong security nothing else an IT team does will matter. Whether they’re coming from lone-wolf hackers, industry competitors or even hostile governments, malware attacks are becoming harder to spot and are more sophisticated in nature. Today’s IT teams need secure networks and multiple layers of authentication to prevent unwanted access to their systems.

2. Development Tracking Tools

Many companies, even those operating outside the technology sector, find that they need to create proprietary software to meet their unique needs. To ensure that the final product serves its intended purpose, an IT team needs a reliable tool to track requirements, work streams, change request, code branches and deployments.

3. Ticketing and Case Management Tools

By now, employees at most large companies are accustomed to using a ticketing system to submit requests for software installations, laptop problems, computer errors and other routine issues. To keep their internal customers happy, IT teams need to ensure that their ticketing and case management tools are user-friendly and facilitate the fastest possible response time.

4. Collaboration Tools

Many of today’s IT teams are comprised of employees in multiple locations, including offshore teams and remote workers. These teams cannot function effectively without tools that allow employees to work together by collaborating on documents, sharing their computer screens and communicating through multiple channels.

5. Project Management Tools

Last, but certainly not least, are project management tools. Robust project management software is essential for any IT team, and its importance increases as a company (and its IT department) grows. A top-tier project management system like Clarizen can actually help an IT team with several of the needs discussed above, as it provides a wealth of innovative features:

Dashboards and workflows to help you automate, manage and respond to change requests

Discussion threads providing collaboration in context to keep your team members engaged and in sync

Time-management features that allow managers to see what their team members are working on and identify over-utilized or under-utilized resources

A customizable and configurable interface that lets you and your team work the way you want

Successful project management is the foundation for long-term growth and customer satisfaction. For more information about how Clarizen can help with project management for IT, take a product tour.